Hidden Waters of New York City: A History and Guide to 101 Forgotten Lakes, Ponds, Creeks, and Streams ​in the Five Boroughsby Sergey Kadinsky W.W. Norton / Countryman, 352 pp.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore, Others will watch the run of the flood-tide, Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east, Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high, A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide. It avails not, time nor place -- distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d....Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856)

Reviewed by Julian Cole Phillips

To Walt Whitman, the network of waterways that cross-hatched what is now New York City were a transcendental link between epochs. “These and all else were the same to me as they are to you,” he wrote. “What is it then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us.”

By Robert PigottAs a bit of greenery opposite the Criminal Court on Centre Street has replaced an unsightly municipal parking lot, the name given this new park -– Collect Pond Park -- evokes 400 years of New York City history. The soggy origins of the block containing the new park pre-date the 17th century encounter of the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam and the Native Americans who inhabited the woods, fields, streams and ponds that were pre-colonial Manhattan.

By Dan Rosen South of Manhattan in upper New York Bay, wedged between New York and New Jersey, sits Liberty Island. The island is shaped like a bean with the Statue of Liberty perched on its eastern shore facing Governor’s Island and Brooklyn beyond.[i] Much of it is dotted with trees from around the world. There are Yoshino cherry trees from Japan, London planetrees and Littleleaf lindens with ties to Europe, and just behind the statue itself, a Norway maple stands in the shadows. The maple is tall with a dark trunk brushed in winding ridges. About six feet up, it splits toward the sky in every direction, creating a thick web of sturdy branches reaching high like Lady Liberty’s right arm. Like many immigrants that passed the statue a century ago on their way into the country, the Norway maple came from Europe and southwest Asia. On its native soil, it had proved itself hardy, able to thrive in adverse conditions. It has the widest range of any maple there, reaching from southern Scandinavia all the way south to northern Iran.[ii] In the U.S., it became increasingly popular following its introduction. It was planted on sidewalks and parks across New York City, including on Liberty Island. And even today, the Norway maple remains one of the most common street trees around. Yet these days, its reputation has been tarnished in a way its early proponents never could have imagined.

Elizz Greatorex drew this sketch of Arch Brook (originally the Saw Kill) on the eastern side of Manhattan in 1869, approximately where E. 75th St. meets FDR Drive today. (source: Mannahatta, 2009).

By Amy Johnson It is hard to imagine Manhattan Island without skyscrapers, traffic, and nearly two million people living upon it. It is equally as difficult to believe that this great metropolis was previously covered in forests, with vast streams crisscrossing the hilly granite terrain. Prior to the establishment of a permanent Dutch settlement on the homeland of the Lenni-Lenape, Manhattan was such a place. And just a little south of modern East 74th street, where Manhattan Island touches the East River, a creek named the Saw-kill once flowed.

One afternoon this past winter, I and my new friend Bill drove over from his Jersey home to the northeast corner of Inwood, looking for something very special. We parked on 9th Avenue just north of 207th Street, next to the municipal bus garage. To the north, a fence blocked our way to the river bank, where Captain Moffat’s yard once stood. There’s no public access now to the rotting ghost-piles. But Bill and I peered through the chain link at the grimy water and the remnants of a pier under which he swam as a child as he reminisced about the water quality, even worse fifty years ago than today.